9 C companyThere are four rifle companies in this
battalion, named after the first four letters of the alphabet. Charles Ryder
commands C Company. Each company has three platoons; one of Ryders
platoons is commanded by Mr Hooper. Each platoon would usually have three
squads of twelve men each. The officer in charge of a company would be a
captain (as Ryder is), that of a battalion usually a colonel (probably not a
full colonel). There would be two or more battalions in a regiment, which
would have a historically strong connexion to a base territory in Britain. To
form a brigade, which had no such territorial loyalty, individual battalions
could be drawn from several regiments. The brigade would naturally be headed by
a brigadier. Battalions were always infantry organisations, but the term
regiment was used by all branches of the army, including artillery and
cavalry. (In fact in 1939 the British Army was the only army in the world which
had dispensed with all horse cavalry for military use.)

9 tram lines metal rails on which ran public conveyances
(trams) which worked on electricity supplied by overhead
cables

9 Glasgow large and ancient city of western Scotland. Pollock
Camp (a real place) was to the south-west of the city, within sound and sight
of it, and obviously not far from the docks on the River Clyde. In his
Diary EW described Pollock Camp as a housing estate cut out of a
park with concrete roads and no houses. A few smoke-blackened trees remain. We
had huts, without water this time  The housing estate had been left
incomplete at the beginning of the war.

9 guard-room a room, usually at the entrance into a camp, used by
soldiers detailed to be guards and as a temporary prison

9 cinemas No doubt these are mentioned because, along with
dance-halls, they supplied entertainment that was available for the
soldiers.

10 municipal lunatic asylum a facility for the incarceration and
treatment of people deemed incapable through madness. Doctors would admit
patients on certification. This one is run by the local authority.

10 happy collaborationists enjoying their heritage at their
ease. The enemy with whom the madmen collaborate appears to be madness
itself, presented as the enemy of everyday life. But, to EWs way of
thinking, normal life - represented here as a century of progress -
is itself inimical to mankinds true nature and aspirations. So the
response of these particularly sensitive inmates is to flee the world around
them and so achieve happiness.

10 Hooper Mr Hooper, as the representative of the burgeoning
power of the lower classes and a symbol of the decay of the old civilisation,
is an interesting creation. His views about the asylum inmates are gross and
unfeeling. One wonders who else would fall under a ban in a world run by
Hoopers. EW may have taken his name from Hilaire Bellocs Ballade
of Genuine Concern. In the middle of a description of a series of national
disasters occur these lines :

England, my England, can the news be true?Cannot the Duke be
got to come to town?Or will not Mr Hooper pull us
through?

The implied but obvious answer is No. The refrain to the
ballade may have suggested to EW the great image of the conclusion of the book
:

The ice is breaking up on every side.

10 Hitler would put them in a gas
chamber, he saidThe plan to exterminate the unfit in Germany dated
from a secret decree signed by the German Führer in 1939. The principles
of eugenics on which this decree was based date back to the nineteenth century
and were in origin stimulated by the latest scientific ideas. Charles
Darwins cousin Francis Galton (1822-1911) applied Darwins theory of
evolution to a deliberate policy of social intervention in order to improve the
stock of the human race. His proposals were given a distinctive tinge by being
mingled with the ideas of the French writer and diplomat Joseph-Arthur comte de
Gobineau (1816-1882), who published his Essay on the Inequality of Human
Races in 1853. He taught the superiority of the white race and, among them,
of the Aryans as the peak of civilization. Gobineaus most important
follower was Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1844-1927), an Englishman who lived
and taught in Germany and whom Hitler acknowledged as his scientific mentor.
Chamberlain argued further that certain races (the Jews, the black races) were
inferior and degenerate and were liable to contaminate the purity and health of
the white races.Early eugenicists (who had a respectable place in society
in the early twentieth century and actually achieved dedicated professorial
chairs in the universities) often argued for sterilisation programmes which
would keep the perceived threat of racial degeneration at bay. They were also
the firmest supporters of programmes of legalised euthanasia. But only in Nazi
Germany were their ideas put into rigorous practice. Sterilisation of the
unfit was authorised in the thirties, and extermination on a
grander scale from 1939. As a result of Hitlers decree eight
hospital centres were set up in Germany in which many thousands of
people deemed to be mentally unfit were killed. These centres were closed down
and moved abroad from 1941 when disquiet about the deaths of so many apparently
physically fit people began to spread in Germany itself.It is just possible
that Hooper could have heard about these activities by this stage of the
war.

10 Middle East probably Egypt, but possibly Syria or what was
called Palestine (now Israel)

10 compassionate leave leave granted for some domestic or
personal reason which requires the soldiers attention

11 the outbreak of war World War II started on 3rd September 1939
when France and Great Britain declared war on Germany after German forces had
invaded Poland on 1st September. Since Ryder soon compares his feelings about
the army to the fourth year of his marriage to a now-unloved wife
and we know that the first leaves of spring are unfolding and that it is three
months since they arrived at a time when snow covered the area (page 9), it
seems that the date is February or March 1943, probably the latter month. But
later (page 23) Ryder states that it was more than twenty years since he had
first been to Brideshead with Sebastian and as we know that was in June 1923
(page 24), it is just as likely to be early 1944. To my mind, 1943 is a
likelier date because this was a year of aimless wanderings by army units; by
1944 the invasion of Normandy was in active preparation and everything was far
more purposeful.

11 volunteered for special serviceSpecial Forces was the title
for such organisations as the Commandos and the Special Air Service (S.A.S.),
formed early in the war to maintain an offensive posture against the otherwise
all-conquering Germans. EW himself joined the Commandos; Charles clearly did
not.

11 conscripts soldiers who had been forced into the army by being
called up instead of volunteering willingly. Ryder is suggesting that the
quality of officer suffered as a result - a different class of man from the
well-educated and well-bred career officers he knew earlier has appeared in the
mess.

11 wireless an older term for a radio. EW was implacably opposed
to having a radio in his living room all his life (when he once wanted to hear
an interview that he had recorded, he had the cooks wireless brought in
from the kitchen), so it is not surprising that Charles dislikes its eternal
noise in the ante-room.

11 ante-room a smaller room which opens into a larger, more
important one such as, here, the dining-room.

11 much beer was drunk before dinner Charles gives this fact as
evidence of a decline in standards. The point is not so much that the officers
drink beer instead of, say, spirits (though that is a pointer); but that they
drink such a lot of it before dinner. Officers in the professional regiments
were expected to be fully sober and rational at their evening meal. The real
drinking came after. Charles goes on to say that he regularly drank three
glasses of gin before dinner : no doubt he felt that this amount did not
endanger his sobriety.

11-12 Here my last love died a moment of folly. This large
paragraph is a vast conceit comparing Charless diminution of respect for
the Army with a mans loss of love for his wife. Charless one
marriage will be to Celia : and so if we wish we can see something of the
progress of that relationship in these cold words. They give an interesting and
eye-opening revelation of a woman whom otherwise we should think of as utterly
self-possessed and resolute in the pursuit of her husbands
welfare.

11 reveille the call to rise in the
mornings, given by a bugler. You may hear it here.

11 Nissen hut a wartime prefabricated building made out of
corrugated steel. Its characteristic shape was of a cylinder cut in half
lengthways. It was quick to manufacture and quick to erect.

11 two corporals A corporal is a non-commissioned officer ranking
below a sergeant but having a similar responsibility in the discipline and
training of the private soldiers, and in implementing officers orders. He
usually came from the ranks of the privates.

11 largest number of men overstaying their leaveThis fact would
help to give Charless Commanding Officer the idea that he was the least
effective company commander.

11 candidates class These candidates are men seeking preferment
in the officer or NCO classes, or possibly selection for a special
task.

12 0915 hours The conventional expression of time in the Army is
the 24-hour clock. This example would be pronounced oh-nine-fifteen
hours. Later times could include, for example, 1930 hours, which
unfortunately ran the risk of being misinterpreted by even the most experienced
of soldiers as being 9.30 p.m. Considerable training and familiarisation was
needed to obviate such blunders.

12 haversack a bag carried on the back or shoulders.

12 detailed to inspect the linesThe lines were the huts (or
sometimes tents) in which the general soldiers lived. Hooper had to make sure
they were empty and clean and that all the kit was collected in one place ready
for transportation.

12 the defence of Calais Calais is the French port on the English
Channel opposite Dover. During the retreat from France by the British Army
which culminated in the Dunkirk episode (when nearly 400,000 troops were
evacuated partly by hundreds of little boats), Calais came under attack.
Ryders battalion expected to be sent to its defence; but wiser counsels
prevailed and no more men were sent across the Channel to compound the
disaster.

12-13 security removing all distinguishing
badges The Commanding Officer does not wish anybody to be able to recognise
his battalion and so track their movements. In particular he wishes to deceive
not so much the enemy (who we now know had no spies operating unacknowledged in
Britain at this time) as the camp followers; a hopeless task.

13 female camp followers generally understood to be prostitutes,
but they could also be women who had a deeper attachment to the men or a man
and made a point of being nearby, often to deal with trivial personal problems.
In either case they could be a nuisance to the authorities.

13 The Pollock diggingsEW is having a joke at the
armys expense here. According to the evidence provided by a future
archaeological dig, the original housing-scheme would indicate the presence of
people of advanced culture, and the remains of the army presence would suggest
tribal anarchy and the race of lowest type which succeeds them. The whole
paragraph demonstrates the extent to which Charles is contemptuous of the army
by this time (as was EW himself in 1943-4).

13 the pundits of the future A pundit is an authority who takes
himself too seriously and can provoke amusement rather than respect.

13 the company sergeant-major He would be the non-commissioned
officer of highest rank in Ryders company.

13 Sappers-demonstration, sir. This is not a
riot of protesters but a lesson given by engineers in which, perhaps, too much
explosive had been used. It was a convenient scapegoat for damage such as a
broken window.

13 flat, Midland accent EW does not particularise it, but it is
an accent from the central counties of England. Hooper could, for example, come
from Birmingham, the second city of England.

13 stand-easies the period on the parade ground when the men are
not commanded to be active or at attention. Hooper is too friendly with the
troops for the taste of his fellow officers and is even despised by the men
themselves.

14 subalterns A subaltern is a junior officer (below the rank of
captain).

14 the general, enveloping fog from which he observed the
universe Hooper is perhaps no different from the vast majority of mankind
(at least in modern Europe) in having no religious motivation or indeed, as
Charles sees it, any firm guiding principles in his life. The few opinions he
does express appear to be either unfeeling (as in the case of the lunatics) or
grounded in envy (as in his levelling ideas), though he might think them a
coherent political statement.

The references which follow display Charles Ryders
classical, literary and historical education. They treat of noble, patriotic or
cultural themes which from childhood had a special resonance for men of his
time and class. They have no meaning or relevance in Hoopers eyes, even
supposing he knew of them.

14 Rupert Prince Rupert of the Rhine (1619-1682), nephew of King
Charles I of England; he was the son of Princess Elizabeth (the Winter
Queen) and Frederick, elector palatine and briefly King of Bohemia.
Rupert raised and led a cavalry force for the king during the English Civil
Wars and bore himself with impressive dash and foolhardiness. After some
victories, his uncle the king made him Commander-in-Chief of his armies in 1644
but sacked him two years later after increasing losses and the surrender of
Bristol to the Parliamentarians. From 1648 Rupert was given charge of the
kings navy; it declined, however, into a piratical force. With the
Restoration of King Charles II (1660) Rupert was again given naval
commands.Prince Rupert was something of a polymath. After retirement from
the military in 1670 he concentrated on his artistic and scientific interests.
He was credited with the invention of mezzotint, but probably he merely
introduced the process into England. He developed a new form of gunpowder and
an alloy named Princes metal, a type of brass containing 75%
copper and 25% zinc.

14 Xanthus the name the gods gave to the River Scamander near
Troy. Troy lies on a hill about four miles from the Aegean Sea; in between lies
a coastal strip which is part of the plain of the Scamander River. This plain
is where the Greeks and Trojans fought in the Trojan War. Xanthos
means golden-red-coloured; the river was so named because it was
supposed to tint with that colour any object dipped into it.

14 that stoic, red-skin interludeEW is thinking of the period
that English upper and middle-class schoolboys go through from the age of nine
when they are sent to a boarding school for whole terms at a time (and
sometimes longer). The time away from home seems like an eternity which has to
be endured rather in the manner of the tests imposed on American Indian boys
who wish to grow into mans estate.

15 Henrys speech on St Crispins
Day a reference to the kings speech before the Battle of Agincourt in
Act 4 scene 3 of Shakespeares play Henry V. It is a famously
morale-boosting and patriotic speech, best understood in Laurence Oliviers rendition in the film of the
play.

15 the epitaph at Thermopylae Thermopylae is a pass in Greece,
strategically important as it controlled entry to central Greece from the
north-east. During the Second Persian War, Thermopylae was the scene of the
brave stand of King Leonidas I of Sparta and his thousand men, only 300 of whom
were Spartans, in their attempt to halt the invasion of the Persians under King
Xerxes in 480 B.C. They fought for two whole days before the Persians found a
pass round to the rear. Leonidas allowed all the non-Spartans to leave (some
did not). Every remaining soldier was killed on the third day and the Persians
got through and sacked Athens. In knowingly sacrificing themselves, the
Spartans gave time for their allies to organise themselves to face the Persian
peril. Perhaps the moral effect was as important as any other. Within a year
the Athenian fleet had destroyed the Persians at Salamis and Xerxes had to
abandon his attempt to conquer Greece. The epitaph, written by Simonides of
Ceos (c. 556-c. 468 BC), reads : Stranger, announce to the Spartans that
we here lie dead, obedient to their words.

15 Gallipoli the bloody and unsuccessful campaign fought by
British and Commonwealth (especially Australian and New Zealand) troops in 1915
to invade Turkey and put her out of World War I

15 Balaclava one of the battles (1854) of
the Crimean War. It was the occasion of the Charge of the Light Brigade, an
heroic but misguided assault upon well-defended Russian positions. Only 200 of
nearly 700 men returned alive to their lines, almost all of them
wounded.

15 Quebec the site of General Wolfes famous victory (1759)
over the Marquis de Montcalm de Saint-Véran which secured Canada for the
British

15 Lepanto Don John of Austrias famous victory over the
Turkish navy (1571) at the head of a Christian fleet. It signalled the
ultimately successful resistance of Christian Europe to the Ottoman
Empire.

15 Bannockburn a decisive victory (1314) by King Robert I (Bruce)
in Scotlands fight for independence against the English

15 Roncevales According to the
11th-century epic Chanson de Roland, Roland accompanied Charlemagne on
his military campaign of A.D. 778 against the Saracens in Spain. In the legend
Roland died heroically when the Saracens isolated and attacked the rear guard,
which he commanded, at the Roncesvalles Pass in the Pyrenees Mountains. To be
historically accurate, it was the recently-subjugated Basques who killed
them.

15 Marathon the site of the battle in the First Persian War (490
B.C.) in which the Greeks defeated the Persians and staved off invasion for a
short time. (In legend, Phidippides ran 25 miles from the battlefield to Athens
to inform the people of the victory and so prompted the inspiration for the
modern race.)

15 Battle in the West where Arthur fell This is the battle of
Camlan (A.D. 537), which some authorities think was a real event. It gave rise
over time to the legend of the death of King Arthur and his treacherous
nephew/son Mordred.

15 my sere and lawless state This looks like a quotation, but I
have not tracked it down. Sere means dry and withered, which
seems excessive for a thirty-nine year old active soldier to believe himself to
be. Charles is lawless presumably because he feels detached from all
responsibilities at this time in his life : he has no wife; he does not
know his children; he is separated from Julia, apparently for ever, and also
from Sebastian; his attachment to the army has withered; he seems to have no
friends.

15 Young England In the thirties there was a general emphasis on
youth and its aspirations all over Europe, generally very strictly controlled
by politically-minded adults (e.g. the Hitler Youth in Germany and Young
Communists elsewhere). England (or rather Britain) had no comparable
organisation (perhaps because it had already developed many less sinister youth
organisations including a strong and wholesome scout movement) but did have
many politicians who were willing to pretend to speak for Youth. Youth Rallies
were frequent and popular. As the war drew to a close people in Britain
began to shift their attention to what peace-time would bring, and in
particular what could be done to provide for future generations. It is the
fatuous clarion calls that these deliberations sometimes provoked that Ryder is
thinking of here. EW went several times in the thirties to a ludicrously
patriotic play called Young England in order to jeer at it publicly.
The phrase Young England was originally adopted by a high-minded
association of aristocratic young men in the 1840s who felt that an
alliance with the working-class, with attendant social reforms, would suit the
Conservative party better than an alliance with the thrusting middle-class.
Benjamin Disraeli (18041881) was an adherent and propagandist of the
group, which failed to survive the splitting of the party after 1845, but his
novel Coningsby (1844) remains as a memorial of their idealism.

15 OCTU Officer Cadets Training Unit

16 a servant
Often called a batman. Hooper is clearly incapable of getting men under
his command to do what is needed. He is a poor kind of
officer.

16 C.O. Commanding Officer

16 the carrier-platoon A carrier platoon in the second world war
would have carried heavier weapons such as Bren guns, perhaps as many as
fifteen of them. An interesting point is that this platoon would be attached to
Headquarter Company and so more immediately under the C.O.s
authority.

16 truffling pigTruffles are a gourmets delicacy, the
edible body of an underground fungus. Pigs (and dogs) have a keen sense of
smell and can be trained to sniff them out and dig them up.

17 this rebuff Ryder makes it clear to the C.O. that the mess was
not made by his men but by Captain Browns. The C.O. invited the rebuff by
automatically assuming that Ryders men must be responsible for the
untidiness, implying that he thinks little of Ryders leadership.

17 Just a flap? Army slang for an unnecessary alarm.

18 R.T.O. Railway Transport Officer

18 fatigue party a group of soldiers ordered to do manual work,
sometimes as a punishment

18 main-line scenery The main railway line south of Glasgow goes
through Carlisle, Preston, Crewe, and Rugby and ends up at London Euston. In
war-time, of course, the route could be altered to suit the authorities. At
some point, probably at Crewe, the train took a line to the south-west.

18 order group a meeting of officers to receive
orders from the C.O., sometimes known as an O Group. The company officers would
then be expected to have their own Order Group to pass on the orders to their
platoon officers.

18 orderlya soldier who acts as an officers assistant, for
example carrying messages

18 adjutantthe C.O.s assistant in dealing with the
administration of the battalion

18 Orders.The process that the C.O. uses here, with a plan
divided into simplistic components, was recommended by military authorities and
drilled into officers.

19 L of C Line of Communication

19 2315 hours The journey therefore was intended to last fourteen
hours. No distance can be computed : in war-time, transport trains were
notoriously slow.

19 how am I to find the perimeter in the dark? This feeble
question is another indication of Hoopers lack of quality as an
officer.

19 Deuxième service Second Service
(French), a term used for example in trains to announce second sittings for a
meal. The sergeant had obviously been in France in 1940.

19 mustard-gas a poisonous gas (also known as Yperite) used by
the Germans in World War I from September 1917. It was the most dangerous of
the gases used in that war. The term mustard comes from its smell.
Mustard gas attacked areas of the body which were moist and so caused
respiratory problems when breathed in, with results that were often fatal. Over
4000 British soldiers died of it, in great agony (they had to be strapped to
their beds in hospital) and usually only after several days of increasing
distress. One of the fears of soldiers in World War II was that the gas would
be used again, even perhaps in bombing raids on targets in Britain. It
wasnt. Wilfred Owens poem Dulce et decorum est is
perhaps the most celebrated literary treatment of the effects of gas attacks,
but he is writing about the use of chlorine gas (a different substance), which
began in 1915. Not only the Germans used chlorine gas; the British managed to
gas their own soldiers in a misdirected attack.

20 bleach Bleach itself contains chlorine and seems, on the face
of it, to be an odd substance to use in decontaminating mustard gas. In fact
the only means of detoxification at this time was by oxidation with
hypochlorite bleaches. Of course, all this activity is imaginary and
designed by Ryder to be annoying to the C.O.

20 company second-in-command As Captain Ryder was his immediate
superior, he was probably a full Lieutenant (pronounced lef-tenant
in Britain).

21 the Bride the Avon There is a River Bride in Dorset
which rises in a lake near which Bridehead House is situated. I do not know
whether EW drew on these names for his Castle and river. There are three
rivers Avon which it seems at this stage EW could be referring to. It is almost
as if he is playing a game with his readers - now guess which one it is. One is
the Warwickshire Avon which flows west through Shakespeares Stratford to
the Severn; another flows into the Bristol Channel; and the third flows south
into the English Channel near Bournemouth.

21 fallow deer a favourite inhabitant of English parks, but not
English. It came originally from Asia.

21 Doric temple It became a craze among English landowners in the
eighteenth century to build little replicas or elaborations of ancient Greek
buildings in their parks and woods. This characteristic form of English folly
lasted well into the nineteenth century, despite the growing fashion for
Gothic. The Doric order is the simplest and noblest of the Greek forms : its
columns are fluted and tapered, have no base and merely a simple circular
capital at the top.

22 like a hind in the brackenIn the first edition of BR, there is
a further sentence, a rhetorical question : Which was
the mirage, which the palpable earth?

22 a sort of R.C. Church Hooper does not know that it is a chapel
attached to the house. R.C. means Roman Catholic (a common British
abbreviation, even in speech).

22 padre The term does not necessarily mean Catholic
priest since any clergyman serving as chaplain with the British armed
forces was called a padre, a usage started in India and dating from about 1800.
We learn much later that this priest is not a chaplain to the forces. Hooper
just means clergyman.

22 More in your line than mine. This phrase indicates that by
1943 Charles is a Catholic.